Marc Peter Keane’s Of Arcs and Circles is a poetic collection of short essays and narratives, each pertaining to a different aspect of gardens, nature, and art. Each chapter tells a different story, with insights on everything from minimalism and simplicity, to impermanence and the meaning of life. Indeed, this collection of anecdotes is like taking a stroll through a Japanese garden itself, with Keane leading the guided meditation.
Creating Arcs and Circles
Marc Peter Keane is a landscape architect and leading expert on Japanese garden design. Keane’s works include both private and public gardens, as well as a number of published books and essays related to Japanese gardens. Of Arcs and Circles, releasing February 8, 2022, is the latest addition to his published titles.
With over 20 years of experience in his field, it’s no wonder his careful eye for detail branches out beyond the garden, into the world around him. Keane’s experience is evident in the way he weaves his words. Each sentence is constructed with the same level of intention as one would put into designing the landscape of a sacred space.
Of Arcs and Circles is not a book about Japanese gardens, but it incorporates all the elements of one. Similar to how each element in a Japanese garden symbolizes a spiritual concept, each chapter in this book reflects on a different philosophical idea, using Keane’s own personal experiences and anecdotes to illustrate them. As Japanese gardens are small in size, gardeners must be deliberate about material selection, arrangement, and use of space. Similarly, Keane skillfully and deliberately arranges each chapter to get the reader to contemplate one topic before introducing the next.
Contemplating Life As If It Were A Garden
Traditional Japanese gardens place importance on not only aesthetic design, but also tie in philosophical and spiritual elements. Representing the connection between the natural landscape and Shinto spiritualism, gardens express not only the beauty of nature, but ‘the fragility of existence as well as time’s unstoppable advance’. [3]
Just as temple gardens offer visitors a quiet space to meditate, Of Arcs and Circles gives the reader a pause from daily life to reflect on aspects of their own existence.
Water, Stones, Trees, and Flowers
Certain elements are always present in a Japanese garden. Water and stone represent the yin and yang in Buddhism. Plants are aesthetically pleasing and symbolic. Architecture, unlike the more complex designs of shrines and temples, are simple and minimalistic. All of this is to facilitate deep thought and meditation. This is exactly what each chapter does, as well.
We begin with the concept of infinity in the chapter, ‘Magnitudes’. This chapter sets the reader up for the journey Keane is about to take them on, forcing the reader to open their mind to concepts and experiences they may not have given much thought to before.
‘Name of the Willow’ continues as a mental exercise on language, and how names and labels fail to convey the entirety of the subject’s being through words alone. ‘A Garden By Any Other Name’ examines the etymology of the word ‘garden’ in different languages, and how it reflects the human desire to create a ‘safe space’ away from the rest of the world.
Other chapters, like ‘Solace for the Tumbling Mind’, bring the reader into a state of meditation as we learn to watch our thoughts. ‘Rivers of the Mind’ show the similarities between our thoughts and memories, and the flow of the river. ‘Unity’ reminds us of those fleeting moments of ‘enlightenment’ in which we find ourselves one with nature.
Of Arcs and Circles
‘Of Arcs and Circles’, the narrative from which the book gets its name, is a previously published work that guides us through the concept of loss, destruction, and impermanence through the telling of the story of a beloved machiya that was scheduled for demolition.
“When people no longer need things, or if they hate them, they destroy them… If people love things however, they care for them and make them last.” (Of Arcs and Circles, p. 46)
Keane uses the example of the building and dismantling of architecture to represent people’s fickle criteria of determining value. When things are devastated, Keane writes, it’s “because their meaning and importance to this society has been lost”.
The loss and destruction of many things are inevitable as required by nature’s cycle. Even natural disasters are only disasters when people are a part of it, when there are victims. Volcanic eruptions give birth to new islands. Plants and animals die and return to the earth, from which new life will grow.Â
“What we see as transience is only a piece snatched out of the big picture. An arc snipped from a circle… The plants returned to the soil. The cycle completed. And that’s why a machiya sent to the fires holds no beauty. It’s been removed from the cycle. All loss, no magic.”
(Of Arcs and Circles, p. 52)
Of Arcs and Circles: A Quiet Escape
Keane writes as if he were sitting by your side, speaking to you about his experiences, calmly over a cup of hot tea. His writing is poetic, yet not overly abstract, making even obscure concepts simple to grasp. Each chapter is like a short meditation. Whether or not you can comprehend each concept with your mind is irrelevant. Of Arcs and Circles isn’t meant to offer answers to life’s greatest mysteries. But it serves as a beautifully written starting point of where to look. Even if the answers we find only make sense to ourselves.
Sources
[1] Of Arcs and Circles by Mark Peter Keane (Releasing February 8, 2022)
[2] Mark Peter Keane. mpkeane.com
[3] Japanese Gardens. Wikipedia
